Life Itself

“This was the absolutely, positively easiest film to program ever in my history at Sundance. It’s a triple threat. First, it’s about a man we all know and love. Second, it’s about cinema and history and everything we love here at Sundance. Third, it’s the next film by Steve James.”—Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper

In 2006, the beloved film critic Roger Ebert lost his ability to eat and speak due to complications from treating the thyroid cancer that would cost him his life in 2013. Instead of allowing himself to be diminished, however, Ebert continued to attend festivals (including his own in Urbana, IL) and to share his passion for film with his millions of followers—through every channel available, and right to the end of his life.

Taking its name from Ebert’s candid and inspiring 2011 memoir, Life Itself chronicles the life and work of the longtime Chicago Sun-Times critic and At the Movies co-host (with the late Gene Siskel) who arguably became the most famous film critic in the world. Steve James (director of Hoop Dreams, a film championed by Ebert) interweaves archival footage and contemporary interviews to creating both an often-surprising portrait of the famed critic and what amounts to a history of cinema over the past five decades. Among the archival clips: footage from Ebert’s conversation with Martin Scorsese at the Wex in 1998 when Scorsese was awarded the Wexner Prize.  (116 mins., DCP)